This blog is dedicated to service members and veterans who, like me, never realized the implications of their military training.
The military taught us how to Armor Up for war, this blog can help you Armor Down to thrive as a civilian.

NewYears IED

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Creating Space under Pressure

I'm not particularly excited to write this post.

The past three nights have been rather sleepless, maybe because last weekend I had a meltdown.

Yeah, not a good way to start a post, but I've noticed a few things these past couple of days that make this experience useful for training.

The main reason I find practicing mindfulness so useful is the space it helps me create between the sometimes crazy crap in my head and me.

So even though I had one of my meltdowns and ended up huddled next to the bedroom closet, part of me was able to watch what was happening.

This meltdown didn't last very long but it was intense. During one moment I had this image of fuzzy dark pressure taking up all of my mind. Nothing made sense, I couldn't think, it was dark and all consuming.

The above image is what my meltdown looked like to me at its most intense moment.

I remember trying to focus on my breath. I remember covering my ears and hearing the sound of my breath the way you hear sounds under water.

That seemed to help and I remember feeling a bit more space.

The room came back into focus and I gained a little more space.

When I came out of it and the pressure subsided, I immediately became ashamed.

Fast as you can blink I had a thousand thoughts storm my mind.

I shouldn't have done this.

Now I'm back were I started.

I'm weak.

I'm not a man.

Well, right away, I started making space between that too.

Thinking about this post and analyzing this last meltdown has given me a better understanding of my inner realm.

This one wasn't nearly as bad as times past. It didn't take me days to get over it either.

Yeah, I had a meltdown, but I'm at peace with it.

This post was guided by the 33th stanza of the Art of Peace, a book written by Morihei Ueshiba , the founder and creator of the Martial Art, Aikido.

Armor Down website

About Me

Regardless of branch, we service members were trained from day one that being hyper-vigilance and putting the mission first meant the difference between life and death.
Down range these fundamentals are force multipliers for the military, but back home they can contribute to dis-ease for the individual.
I developed the training principles of Armor Down by dedicating 114 weeks of my life to the study of The Art of Peace (AOP), the practice of Mindfulness to tame my hyper vigilant mind and the use of exercise to re-train my mind to listen to my body instead of ignore it. This Blog represents the first example of how a service member can use the AOP as a path to thriving as a civilian.